


The Puppeteers Wish.

by Athenastark06



Series: sanders statements [5]
Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series), The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Canon-Typical The Web Content (The Magnus Archives), Other, The Web Fear Entity (The Magnus Archives)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-11
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-18 03:47:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29362002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Athenastark06/pseuds/Athenastark06
Summary: Case: 008-239-003Logan: statement of Anderson Clark regarding the lead up to his stage manager’s untimely demise. Original statement taken 5th November 2010. Statement recorded 19th June 2017 by Logan Princeton, head archivist of the sanders institute, London.
Series: sanders statements [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2143584
Kudos: 3





	The Puppeteers Wish.

_ Case: 008-239-003 _

_ Logan: statement of Anderson Clark regarding the lead up to his stage manager’s untimely demise. Original statement taken 5th November 2010. Statement recorded 19th June 2017 by Logan Princeton, head archivist of the sanders institute, London.  _

_ Statement begins.  _

Before this, I worked for Selena Sails for ten years, in a small community theatre just outside Durham. I was her costume director and made most stuff by hand, or purchased it from various charity shops and the odd fair around our small part of England. 

It all happened in the early 2000s, ‘02 specifically. She came in one day announcing that she’d found the next great play, that it was perfect and similar nonsense. As her unofficial second in command and her longest running employee, everyone looked to me to head into her office and figure out what was going on and what she’d found. When I went in she grinned at me from her desk, showing me her find properly. “It doesn’t have a title.” I said eventually, after about a minute of her looking at me expectantly. “No,” she agreed “But I’ll sort that, have a look through, it’s in latin, but it’s also well illustrated.”

“Do you speak latin?”

“Of course” she beamed, nodding for me to read in delight. 

I sighed and began to thumb through the slightly dog eared text. It was heavy, probably leather, with illustrations throughout the book showing a man, he starts off making puppets, until he is turned into one. He then is shown doing shows all over his country, until the king is seen, eyes narrowed and looking suitably villainous, glaring at the reader whilst pointing forward. Now the puppet is seen running and running until he dives into a spider’s web, where the spider seems to make him an offer. The king’s guard are then seen, and the spider turns them into puppets by using it’s webbing and allowing the puppeteer to torture them. I stared at the book in ill disguised horror before turning to Selena. “We can’t show this, we don’t even know who the writer is,”

She shook her head at me and directed me to the very front of the book, where a bookplate of gold informed me that the book was from “the library of Jurgen Lietner”. It had an emblem at the top of books chained and bound to a shelf and written in latin on said shelf were the words “periculosum libris” I have later learned that means “dangerous books”. 

I sighed then, forced to agree that it was a simple but effective plot, and we began talking over costume and set design, whilst she informed me that she would write the script herself, as she was the only person who spoke latin. 

We spent several months on the project, working on lights and sound and all the rest with only references from the book to work on, as the script itself was revamped over and over again behind the scenes. At one point, we were told we would need gasoline, as a section had been added where the king attempted to burn the puppet before he fled into the forest. Or maybe it was already in the book, none of us spoke the language after all. 

After a few weeks, we started to see less of Selena, and eventually I was sent in to deal with the issue of a distinct lack of instructions. I waited until everyone had gone home first, and then slipped into the office. 

The only light in the office was the cracked laptop screen, and it took me a few seconds to realise what I was looking at and a few more to comprehend it. Selena beamed at me from where she hung from the ceiling, her smile seeming forced and crooked as her lips were dragged up by the springs attached to them. One arm rose and waved as she stared in horror at me. From her feet, head, arms and legs, little hooks dug into the flesh, rising into cables fixed to the ceiling. She greeted me with a smile and after a few seconds, called out. “Anderson, take the book.” she called out. Her voice sounded wrong, as if it had been ripped from her throat against her will. “Take the book and join me in the heart of the web.”

I found myself beginning to move, taking the book and starting to try to read, but one look at the incomprehensible latin snapped me back to the present and instead I ran out of the room, book clutched in my hand. I locked the office door hastily, peering through the letter box for a few seconds to ensure that she wasn’t trying to come after me. 

When I was sure I was safe I stashed the book in my backpack, swinging said pack onto my shoulder before sprinting into the special effects department and grabbing one of the gasoline pumps before pulling my lighter out of my pocket. I raised the pump to the door and… I’m sure you can guess what happened next. You can report me to the police if you want, they didn’t even consider Arson, because the entire theatre burnt down, leaving nothing but ash and, in the basement, a large spider web. 

I sold the book, in the end, because I didn’t want to keep the damn thing anywhere near me. It was purchased by MCRBOOKS on Ebay for 6,000 pounds in 2004.

I haven’t asked after the buyer. 

_ Statement ends.  _

_ Logan: I asked Patton to look into this statement originally, although he got as far as hearing about the spider in the story and promptly passed it on to Roman, who confirmed a small theatre burning down in Durham and even managed to find a record of the fire stations report on the issue. I’ve decided not to ask how, if he’s breaking and entering again, I don’t want to know. Other than that, the main issue here is obvious, as well as several other statements we’ve found in reference to the shape shifter De and his companion, we have now found evidence my Predecessor, Gertrude Robinson, didn’t even report any Leitner statements.  _

_ In all honesty, I’m starting to doubt the idea she read them at all, although Virgil worked for her in her last year, and he claims that she was definitely doing something with the statements, we will continue to look into the issue, and I will file this under “signs of Gertrude’s gross incompetence” a file Roman started for statements relating to current investigations.  _


End file.
